Livable Communities: Just What the Doctor Ordered
Smart Growth America Praises American Academy of Pediatrics' Community Prescription for Child Health

Contact: David Goldberg
Communications Director (202) 412-7930

Washington, D.C. - Geoff Anderson, President and CEO of Smart Growth America, today praised the American Academy of Pediatrics for prescribing community design as a crucial part of child health ("POLICY STATEMENT: The Built Environment: Designing Communities to Promote Physical Activity in Children"). The American Academy of Pediatrics today:

• links community design to overall child health,
• encourages pediatricians to work with parents to promote more walkable, livable communities, and
• calls on government to plan for and invest in transportation in ways that best advance the health, safety, and financial well being of American families.

American Academy of Pediatrics Policy Statements are "Organizational Principles to Guide and Define the Child Health Care System and/or Improve the Health of All Children". Today's policy statement appears in the June issue of Pediatrics^®, the flagship journal of the AAP.

Pediatrics has been ranked #1 out of 74 pediatrics journals by the Thomson/ISI Journal Citation Reports for the fourth consecutive year.

Geoff Anderson:

"Healthy communities mean healthy kids. The American Academy of Pediatrics is the most authoritative voice in the United States for healthy kids, and we applaud the Academy for stepping forward to connect smart neighborhood design to the well being of our children. We also applaud the Academy for calling on our government leaders to act on that connection.

"We can have a direct impact on reducing childhood obesity, lowering the pollution that causes asthma, and improving our children's quality of life. We can-and the American Academy of Pediatrics says we should-build less car-dependent communities, make existing routes to school safer, and ensure that children and their parents have safe, active transportation options like walking or bicycling.

"Looking ahead, we encourage the Obama administration, the U.S. Congress, and our state and local leaders to include childhood health as they make transportation decisions. By spending transportation portions of the economic stimulus and shaping upcoming transportation legislation in ways that prioritize healthier, better living, they can build 21^st Century infrastructure that is safer, cleaner, smarter and healthier for the next generation."

The AAP Policy Statement is available at: http://aappolicy.aappublications.org/cgi/content/full/pediatrics;123/6/1591

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ABOUT SGA

Smart Growth America is a coalition of national, state and local organizations working to improve the ways we plan and build the towns, cities and metro areas we call home. The coalition includes many of the best-known national organizations advocating on behalf of historic preservation, the environment, farmland and open space preservation, neighborhood revitalization and more. Our state- and regional-level members are community-based organizations working to save treasured landscapes while making our towns and cities ever more livable and lovable.